Welcome to Mars!

Hello, friends!

Welcome to the crazy little Martian house we bought. The previous owner, Jackie, lived there for fifty years before her death in June at 88. It's a great house on a great block in a great neighborhood, & it just needs a little love & a little sweat to update it & make it sparkle.

We'll be documenting our progress here, for our far-flung family & friends. So, to begin with, here are the before photos (taken by the listing agent).

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This is the dining room, which is the central room in the house. The place isn't quite as huge as the photos suggest -- it's a very comfortable size.

The room behind the closed door had the washing machine in it. No dryer -- just a clothes line out back. We moved the washer down to the basement, because we needed to add a dryer. Eventually we're going to put in a second bathroom there; for now, I think the homebrew stuff is going in there.

Yellow room is the kitchen. Room opening to the left is the bedroom.

Note the old gas space heater in the corner. The property inspector said it was unsafe & not worth repairing, so we had that taken out. Still working on getting some other form of heat in there...er, it'll be fine.

The lighting fixture looks like a UFO, so it's appropriate.

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This is the dining room from the other direction, facing the living room & front door. The front door has purple glass knobs.

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This is the room opposite to the living room at the front of the house. It was Jackie's bedroom, judging from the placement of the Sacred Heart, hanging in the middle of the wall right there.

We'll be using it as an office.

The door there on the right, at the edge of the photo, goes to the Jack & Jill bathroom.




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Obviously, the bathroom. The plumbing & fixtures were updated in 2007, along with most of the electrical system.

The office is on the other side of the closed door.

The bedroom is behind the person taking the photo. The realtor didn't put a photo of the bedroom on the listing; it basically looks like the office, but with just one, tall window that has a breath-taking view of the neighbor's roof.

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This is the kitchen. We moved the refrigerator out of the sloping porch out the door on the right (photo to come) to the spot on the left.

The countertops are the same ones my grandmother put in in a 90's renovation in the kitchen of the farm house she lived in for 50 years.

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This is the back of the house -- pretty much the exterior of the sloping porch, & a sort of work room/garden shed area below. The family cleaned out most of the stuff that was stored in the house, but there's still a lot left in that room -- some of it is just junk like broken lamps, but some of it is fascinating, beautiful old stuff like jars from the 50s and a sort of old (dead) fuse box or plate or something.

You can see at the top of the building that there is damage to the vinyl siding (which was put on in 1991), & this being the windward side of the house, there is water damage to this side of the building. Further, when this was built, the convention was to just stick the wooden support beams directly into the dirt, which obviously leads to deterioration over time, & is why the sloping in the upper porch is so bad. The First Big Project that we're saving up for will be to take the whole porch off & put in an open deck to open up the back area more.

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And now, the yard. This photo is what originally gave the house its name -- this yard looks like a Martian landscape. It doesn't help that the photo has been weirdly tinted.

The sticks in the brick edging are enormous (around 6' tall) rose-bushes that have been hacked back. We think there are 7 or 8 of them back there.

There are other flowers & trees back here, as well -- rosemary, something like a magnolia, the giant fern in the foreground of the photo. We'd like to have some sort of garden back here, & some citrus trees.

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Lastly, this is Carol Reen, our Realtor®.

This woman moved mountains to get us into this house. She is literally the greatest Realtor® who has ever lived. She is the Realtor® of Realtor®s.

If you want to buy a house in the Bay Area, you must call her. You must.








Many more photos to come! Garage! Weird room with deadbolts in the garage! New plumbing! A panda! What's under all that wood paneling?! What's under all that pink paint?! Stay tuned!